He Has A Little Way To Go Yet.....

Red Meat
Written by Publius
Monday, 23 March 2009 04:56
After years of saying not much in particular about the gun registry, and that odd year long silence about the CWB, Stephen Harper started sounding like his old self yesterday:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper set his sights on the federal long gun registry Saturday, asking a meeting of recreational sportsmen to help him build enough support in Parliament to scrap the registry.
Harper urged members of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters to contact opposition MPs and pressure them to support legislation that would target the six-year-old program.
"We are looking to unite a majority of MPs in repealing the long gun registry," Harper told the group in a speech in Mississauga, west of Toronto.
"The leaders of the opposition parties continue to be against this. But there are MPs in all these parties that know what we know, that law-abiding hunters and farmers are not part of the crime problem."
"I challenge you to press these MPs to follow their consciences."
In its entire lifetime, Harper's minority government has never brought a bill to abolish the registry to a vote, fearing there would not be enough support in the House of Commons.
Three years in and now he thinks it's a priority? Even Brian Mulroney got around to scrapping the NEP within 2 years of entering office. Could this conversion to the cause of gun rights be spontaneous? Or driven by other less dignified factors:
There is a "schism" in the governing Conservative Party between the old Reform and PC wings that will likely erupt whenever Prime Minister Stephen Harper steps down as leader because there is no obvious successor who can unite the two sides, say some conservatives.
"I think as long as Harper is the leader, there's going to be a unity there, but I think there is definitely a schism in the party between the old Progressive Conservative wing and the Canadian Alliance/Reform wing. The day Stephen Harper steps down as leader, you're going to see that become a real issue because I don't see anybody as a possible successor to Stephen, who could appeal to both wings," said Democracy Institute senior fellow Gerry Nicholls, former vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, in an interview with The Hill Times recently.
OK. Gerry Nicholls is the professional prophet of doom for the conservative movement, always bitchin' about how the Harper Conservatives have lost their way. How many agree with Nicholls? The Prime Minister's recent revelation on the gun registry sounds like shoring up the party's base. A sudden announcement about the CWB, some new legal initiative or perhaps even a bill laid before the House, might be in the offing. The dogs are growling and Papa Stephen needs to throw them some red meat.
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